Craft ACT Artist-in-residence 2014: Bogs and Fens

Above: Sally Blake, Seed Baskets (detail) 2015, Plant dyed wool and silk, silver wire. Image courtesy of the artist.
ecological communities are easily
threatened due to exotic weeds, clearing
of land for pasture work or residential
development, sphagnum moss-industry
(yes, really), erosion from livestock tread
and grazing, wildfires, and domestic
human waste such as discarded rubbish.
I recently discovered that to see a ‘before’
and ‘after’ shot of a bog and fen system
trampled by hard hoofed herds is – once
you’ve appreciated the life-cradling role of
the bog and fen – more unnerving for me
than remembering when my phone gave
a final, personal-information-eclipsing
wink last year. I see this as a hopeful sign.
To resurrect and reconnect the
environment to the human conscience,
MacFarlane, in his article, called for
English language speakers to ‘re-wild’ our
vernaculars. He asked readers to consider
the beauty and environmental detail
of old English, Welsh and Irish words.
The most stunning example MacFarlane
gave, of a word tied to a complex and
old environmental meaning was the
Gaelic, ‘èit’, which refers very exactly to
“the practice of placing quartz stones in
streams so that they sparkle in moonlight
and thereby attract salmon to them in
the late summer and autumn”.
PAGE 12